I'm getting a lot of mails from GCP owners asking when our KickTags (labels) are going to be re-released for the GCP, so I hope you don't mind me posting an update here to let you all know what's going on!
Firstly, I apologise that they are currently unavailable - we withdrew the GCP labels last year.... I'm redoing these at the moment (they've been out on road-test with Jamie Humphries of Lick Library/We Will Rock You) and I'm going to tweak them a bit based on feedback.
The original GCP labels we did were cool, but the issue with the GCP is that the composition of the board is such that it isn't very 'attractive' for regular consumer magnets. The stuff we used for the original labels would therefore not adhere that strongly to the board. This is generally ok, but potentially causes issues when you transport the board, as labels could fall off. This is why, when I started to look at another way of making these last year, I withdrew the GCP ones from sale too.
It took the best part of a year to work it out, but we've now reworked everything and recently launched V2 of our labels for the Fractal MFC (called KickTags V2 - yes, I know, not that imaginatively named!) which are an entirely different kettle of fish. The magnets have the strongest pull rating of any magnet of its type in the UK (stronger than most magnets used for vehicle signs), and we spent ages working out the perfect way to make the 'Tops' for the magnets (the printed bit), again based on feedback since we launched our labels in April 2011. Much much thicker and robust - 1mm thick compared to 0.25 with the original labels.
As a gigging musician myself (which is why I came up with these in the first place), I would find that under stage lighting, there was a tendency for the printed surface of a label to reflect light quite easily, which made the labels hard to see. This gets worse when you laminate them (which I had tried with various approaches) as they become overly glossy. After a lot of trial and hair-pulling, we found a great surface material that isn't overly glossy (but still *looks* glossy) and holds colour really well - super vibrant. This then has a light coating of liquid laminate to protect the surface, make it UV and water resistant, but still not over glossy. The end result is that, basically, it works!
Been getting great reviews for the Fractal MFC ones we've launched with, and these are currently on the boards of Steve Vai, Dave Weiner, Larry Mitchel, Stef Carpenter (Deftones) and others, all of whom are using the new V2 labels with our glow-in-the-dark text inserts.
I'm particularly excited about the GCP ones we're going to launch, as the labels are larger than the MFC ones and just look the dogs danglies! Here's a shot of one of the labels we did for Jamie Humphries:
and here's an older shot of our original labels, with glow in the dark text inserts
The 'experiment' I'm currently doing is to separate these into individual labels with the new magnets (the originals were done as double-switch labels, as in the picture above). Hope to get cracking on these in earnest in Feb with a launch planned for late Feb/ early March.
Hope that helps - didn't mean for this to sound like an ad, but given the number of enquiries I'm getting, I just wanted to explain why the labels aren't available yet and what is coming along soon.
Cheers,
Sukh
http://www.pedalboardlabels.com